


certain obscure things

by absopositivelutely



Series: the divine order of ideal things [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Historical References, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining, Slow Burn, a whole 6000 years of pining, aka the episode 3 opening but m o r e, podfic available!, read: aziraphale not actually realizing he's pining, so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 21:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absopositivelutely/pseuds/absopositivelutely
Summary: Take into consideration: the Earth is a Libra. There are two sides to her cosmic scales, but they are almost never balanced. In theory, angels should be solidly on the right side, and demons should be definitively on the left. In practice, though, this isn’t quite true. Aziraphale adds the weight of Crowley’s gaze to his own set of scales and feels himself slipping.(alternatively: aziraphale has been falling in love with crowley for 6000 years. not that he realizes it.)





	certain obscure things

**Author's Note:**

> hey hi hello! i did so much unnecessary research for this fic and i'm not entirely sure if it's all historically correct anyway but that's fine. also technically the library of alexandria didn't Completely burn down but there was a fire in that general area around that time so,, we're gonna go with it. for the Drama! also- all subtitles(?) are from [the dictionary of obscure sorrows](https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/), and the title is from pablo neruda's _sonnet xvii_.
> 
> hope you enjoy!
> 
> ps- mr sheen, if you're lurking, we Know. also i love you.

**opia**

> the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye

There is a cliche that will be invented some thousands of years later that goes something like this: the eyes are the windows to the soul. As a matter of fact, it is one Anthony J. Crowley who introduces humanity to the pained exasperation you experience upon hearing a cliched saying. In this time, however, the demon named Crowley is going by Crawly, and the cliche has not yet been invented.

So it is with a marked lack of exasperation that Aziraphale is able to make this not-cliche observation: despite the fact that Crawly is a demon, and demons are fallen angels, which must mean that whatever is left of a demon’s soul is dark and twisted and torn apart, there is a certain warmth in Crawly’s yellow eyes. When the sunlight catches just right, his eyes look like molten gold; sunlight on water, blood of angels. _ (how much angel, aziraphale wonders, is left in him? if he bleeds, does he bleed fire, ink, gold?) _

Aziraphale glances over at Crawly, shuffling closer under his extended wing. He reaches a hand out to catch a raindrop and confirms what he suspects. The first storm on Earth has been sent by God Herself. 

“Holy water?” Crawly says, already leaning away. Aziraphale nods and watches Crawly’s eyes widen, slitted pupils going round, twin eclipses glowing in the middle of a storm. “She trying to kill me already?”

“Can’t argue with the Ineffable Plan, after all,” Aziraphale says wryly, meeting the demon’s gaze steadily. Crawly snorts and flicks a wing out sharply, dark feathers nudging against Aziraphale’s ribs. He bites back a laugh and looks away; Crawly’s eyes are bright and expressive, and a side effect of a human corporation that Aziraphale has yet to get used to is the way your breath catches in your throat _ (before bodies, before time, there were white-hot flashes and YOUMEUSHERENOW—TOGETHER) _.

**onism**

> the frustration of being stuck in just one body

Celestial beings tend not to stay on Earth too long. It’s the whole principle of the thing: they are not of this planet. If you care enough to attempt to understand, take a piece of paper. Now fold it in half, and then fold it in half again, and again, and again, until you can’t fold it anymore. If you imagine that you are the paper, you’ll have an inkling of what it is like for both angels and demons to appear as humans on Earth. It takes a great deal of effort to package approximately ten dimensions into the confines of humanity’s three.

In theory, Aziraphale understands this. Whenever any of the Archangels pay him a visit, they wonder at how he can stand to live here when being in Heaven would allow him to, literally and figuratively, stretch his wings. He shrugs it off and tells them he is grateful to fulfill a role that the Almighty needs fulfilling.

In truth, Aziraphale’s reasons are much less altruistic than he would have the Archangels believe. 

“You’ve read most of them, haven’t you?” 

“Yes, but not all,” Aziraphale says softly. He isn’t sure if the flames flickering in Crawly’s eyes are from the fire surrounding them or from his own demonic nature.

“Not all of the library will burn,” Crawly answers. Aziraphale tilts his head at the demon, considering him; he thinks that might be a note of genuine sympathy in Crawly’s voice.

“Still,” Aziraphale says. He is staring at something very far away_ (eyes in another dimension, perhaps. there are ways to work around the limitations of human bodies, after all) _. “It won’t be the same. I most likely won’t get that scroll I always wanted.”

“Covetous, are we? Now that’s a temptation to report back Downstairs.”

“Oh, please don’t,” Aziraphale gasps, turning suddenly to Crawly. “Do you think I might—”

Crawly sighs, then. “Angel, don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t fall for a _ scroll. _ You think Heaven cares that much about what you do?” 

“Well, I should certainly hope so,” Aziraphale murmurs, though that isn’t quite true. He wishes they wouldn’t, anyway. But he knows the way they look down on him: this Principality reduced to a human body. “Best for me to go now. I suppose I shall see you in a few decades, Crawly. Thwarting your wiles and all.”

What humans don’t know is that sometimes dimensions can spill over, so to speak. The sense that someone is watching you from behind may just be the fifth dimension unfolding itself for a quick stretch. In Aziraphale’s case, however, there are hundreds of eyes that open in the fifth dimension to watch Crawly staring after him as he walks away.

He receives an unmarked package decades later: the Crucifixion has taken place, and they must hide their true forms more than ever. A scroll is nestled inside, dust and ash clinging to its edges. There is a note inside: _ live a little, angel. _ A small serpentine curl of a sigil, the sender signing his name. The scroll is filled with writings and illustrations of the universe. _ (aziraphale wonders: are these the stars that crowley hung in the sky? did he own this piece of the universe, once?) _

**anchorage**

> the desire to hold on to time as it passes

Time is something so very human. It does not matter in Heaven or in Hell, not to those who have been there since before time itself. No, time is something that only serves humanity; here on Earth, there are numbers, values, something precious sewn into the fabric of time. Funny that they don’t see what is right in front of them: clocks are circles, after all, and time is a wheel that turns and turns, everything repeating itself in the end. 

But Aziraphale finds himself keeping time, now: five years since he arrived in Florence, five hundred years since he agreed to the Arrangement with Crowley, five thousand years since the Garden. Earth is different than Heaven; despite their short lives, humanity has shown him more than Heaven ever has. There is life, and then there is _ living. _ And the latter is something worth keeping time for.

This is something only humanity has to offer: around him, the workshop is busy with apprentices cleaning palettes and mixing paint; there are canvases leaning against every surface in the room, and in the center of it all, the master stands, his latest work before him. It is perhaps a guilty pleasure of Aziraphale to watch creation by human hands. _ (stars trailing in the wake of angelic fingertips, nebulas bursting across celestial wings—orbiting around each other, a binary system—gravity isn’t too different from love, in the end.) _

“All this religious art your doing, then?” 

He doesn’t bother asking how Crowley found him here. He always does, somehow. 

“Oh, no, they thought it all up themselves,” Aziraphale says. He can’t quite help the smile on his face. “I believe they call this the Renaissance.”

“Your accent is awful,” Crowley informs him. “Blessing these paintings, are you?”

“No, actually,” Aziraphale says. “Doing a favor for someone and delivered some canvases here. I’m just staying to watch. I quite enjoy it.”

Crowley makes a noncommittal noise. “Well, whenever you’re done watching, seeing as I’m in the area, I thought I might ask if you’d like some lunch?”

Lunch turns out to be closer than dinner, the sun just beginning to set by the time they exit the workshop. The market is busy now, so they sit on some boxes on the side of the road to eat their bread. Crowley is all long sprawled out lines, golden sunlight catching on the sharp angles of his face, and Aziraphale understands, suddenly, why humans collect moments so desperately, so selfishly, pocket watches nestled close to their hearts. 

_ Chiaroscuro, _ Aziraphale remembers, is the way artists use light and dark to illuminate a painting. Make it real, breathe life into it _ (they were light before they were anything else) _. He wants this in a painting, soft fiery light outlining Crowley’s jaw, his cheekbones, the curls of his hair. 

Humans cannot perform miracles, cannot stop time, but they can hold it in their hands, canvas and oil paint and the quiet promise of mortality between their fingers. 

**gnossienne**

> a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life

There are certain unspoken rules that every society has in place. They are different for everyone, but to be generic, everyone knows this: there are some things you just don’t ask. Edging around the cliffside, following in footsteps; to know someone is to dance a dance, play a game, refusing to swallow a bitter pill.

It is not quite the same for angels and demons. Certain questions do not hold the same consequences for them as they do humanity; Aziraphale likes to ask his prospective customers how much they earn a year in order to prevent them from returning. There are other questions, however, that he could never put into words.

Instead, he settles for this: “Why are you here, Crowley?”

“S’posed to stop them from agreeing to trade with the settlers,” he says. “I assume you’re here to thwart me.”

“Encourage unity between the settlers and the tribes, yes,” Aziraphale says. “Shall we leave them to deal with it themselves?”

Crowley snorts, stretching out on the rock he’s sitting on. He yawns, baring too-sharp teeth, and Aziraphale thinks that if he looks too closely he can see the outline of a snake sunning itself on the rock. “Yeah, let’s do that. Should get credit for this whole gold rush thing, anyway. Greed and whatnot.”

“Covetousness,” Aziraphale offers tentatively. He knows every line of that scroll, has memorized the way its rough edges feel when you run a finger over them. Crowley doesn’t answer, but levels a flat look at him from behind his glasses _ (clocks are wheels and they keep time in this dance of theirs, always circling around each other, careful not to step on the truth). _

Aziraphale shifts his weight from one foot to the other, twisting his ring around his pinkie. He clears his throat. “Like it much here in America?”

A bark of laughter from Crowley. “Too big. Open. Space to think. Good to stretch your wings, though.”

Aziraphale nods, though Crowley isn’t looking at him. His gaze is somewhere in the distance, the mountains unfolding across the horizon, the low rolling rush of the river near the outpost. Hesitantly, he sits on a stack of crates next to the demon and lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“You ever get to know them?” Crowley asks. He waves in the general direction of the crowds of people with a rolled up piece of paper Aziraphale didn’t notice he was holding. “Not _ them _ exactly. Humans in general. Specific ones. You know what I mean.”

He cuts a glance sideways at Crowley and is met with only his reflection in those dark glasses. Aziraphale watches himself shake his head and hears Crowley sigh softly. “Don’t,” Crowley advises. “So far, you’re the only other person who’s survived the past six thousand years.”

“Five thousand eight hundred,” Aziraphale corrects. When he looks down, Crowley has unrolled the piece of paper in his hands. The dark shape of a bird in flight is outlined in ink. A crow, he thinks. The illustration style looks vaguely familiar. A year later, he will look through his collection of books and find one titled _ The Birds of America, _written by one John James Audubon who had died a year earlier.

“Round it up,” Crowley says, a carefully maintained lightness to his voice. “What does two hundred years matter, anyway.”

“It matters to them,” Aziraphale says. Crowley looks away and rolls the drawing up again. _ (can you love them? aziraphale wants to ask. how could you have fallen, if you can love?) _

**la** **gaudière**

> the glint of goodness inside people

Black and white are not actually colors. They are instead defined by the presence of light. White is the purest light in the world, and black is simply the absence of all light. There are always two sides to things, after all. Bright or dark, heads or tails, right or wrong. Heaven or Hell.

But take into consideration: the Earth is a Libra. There are two sides to her cosmic scales, but they are almost never balanced. In theory, angels should be solidly on the right side, and demons should be definitively on the left. In practice, though, this isn’t quite true. Aziraphale adds the weight of Crowley’s gaze to his own set of scales and feels himself slipping.

Liminal spaces feel like floating; like a feather caught in the wind, not quite knowing where it will end up. It has been a week since the first day of the rest of their lives, and Aziraphale still feels as though he is waiting for something that may never happen. But Earth is a liminal space, if he thinks about it, and perhaps existing somewhere not quite defined is something they have been doing for six thousand years _ (somewhere between good and evil; somewhere between hatred and love) _. 

In the other room, Crowley is yelling at his plants. Aziraphale moves closer.

“...aren’t _ perfect! _ There is a literal _ angel _ here, you could at least try! Let’s see here. You. You’re coming with me. And the rest of you: _ grow better!” _

Crowley stalks out of the room with a small plant in hand, disappearing into another room down the hallway. Aziraphale hears the whirr of a paper shredder and physically feels the fear rolling off the other plants. He preoccupies himself with his book when Crowley emerges into the living room, carrying a conspicuously unshredded plant. 

“Be right back, angel,” Crowley tosses lazily over his shoulder. Aziraphale hums in acknowledgement and turns the page. He waits a few minutes before looking out the windows to the back alley.

“...proud of you,” Crowley is muttering quietly. Aziraphale nudges the window open a bit wider and listens intently. “You’ve rebelled. Congratulations. Didn’t deserve you anyway.”

Aziraphale watches as Crowley transfers it from its pot to a planter leaning against the wall of the building. He is still standing by the window when Crowley gets back upstairs. Breathe in, breathe out. Between two breaths is a liminal space. 

“Don’t say a word, angel,” Crowley says softly. “Nothing to see out there.”

His sunglasses are off, golden eyes wide and open, offering himself up to be read. Somewhere in the sixth dimension, there is a wave of love so strong it knocks Aziraphale off his metaphysical feet. 

There aren’t quite the words for this in-between they live in _ (aziraphale remembers: the rough edges of two consciousnesses brushing against each other, how this middle ground felt like light being pulled into a black hole, stretched across thousands of years). _

“I love you, you know,” Aziraphale says, and he can breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> crowley’s plant scene was Absolutely inspired by a tumblr post i saw a while back. pls read the next work for crowley’s version!
> 
> kudos and comments always appreciated :)
> 
> find my art on [tumblr](https://m-9studios.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] certain obscure things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829645) by [carboncopies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carboncopies/pseuds/carboncopies)


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